Football Food Guide
Pre match food can have a major effect on performance! Players diet should be high in carbohydrates and low in Fats. The ideal target should be Carbohydrates 60-70%, Fats 20-30% and Protein 10-15%. The key to getting enough is to be absolutely sure you include the staple Carbohydrates at main meal times. These are bread, potatoes, rice, pasta or noodles. So the following is a typical day's menu to show you that it is not as hard as you might have thought.
Breakfast
300 mls of fresh orange juice
60gm cereal with semi-skimmed milk
2 Thick slices of toast with jam, marmalade or honey
Snacks
3 Bananas
1 in the morning, 1 in the afternoon, 1 in the evening
A few biscuits
A chunk of corbo's cake
Lunch
This should include pasta, noodles, pizza, potatoes or rice
For example
( Chilli con carne with rice followed by dried fruit salad with greek yoghurt and honey )
Dinner
This should include either pasta, noodles, pizza, potatoes or rice
( If you had rice for lunch try potatoes for dinner or the other way round )
Grazing
It's a good idea to keep some carbohydrate snacks handy to eat between meals
These could be vanilla flavoured prunes, raisins,dried apricots or pears
Avoid
Fried Food
French fries, eggs and bacon, fish and chips, crisps and doughnuts, etc
Fat Foods
Excess butter/margarine, salami, pepperami, bologna, sausage, hot dogs and burgers
Alcaholic drinks
The pre match meal or snack offers very little for the energy production system and it can do much damage if the wrong foods have been consumed. It has been suggested the player should enter the game with a stomach as empty as possible. When there is food in the stomach, the heart pumps large amounts of blood to the stomach to aid digestion. If playing or training, however, the blood is moved to the muscles, therefore stopping the digestive process. This often causes stomach cramp or more common a stitch, making the player very uncomfortable and no good to the rest of the team.
1 HOUR BEFORE THE GAME
At this stage the player should primarily keep to a fluid intake for a well hydrated body, but some players may require some food and this could be a banana
The object on match day is to produce a player who has an empty stomach and gastrointestinal tract, who has had enough fuel for the muscles and enough food to prevent hunger so that the blood will goto the working muscles, not the digestive system
All working muscles rely primarily on fuel being stored from meals eaten in days leading up to the match. Food eaten on match days fuels the brain and keeps the muscles topped up when the competition is long or intermittent
This careful preparation before any match produces a settled stomach, a well hydrated athlete, a comfortable athlete, and a confident athlete who should be fully focussed on the job ahead
This is only a guide for players to use and in some cases the above information can be changed to suit the players' needs
Have Fun
Cameron Carpenter - Colin W Mallett
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